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Remembering Glenville High
Written By: Carol M. Bryson | Issue: 2020/11 - November
The Glenville High School is still remembered with affection and a healthy dose of community pride.
Before the present day Blue Ridge School was the high school for Cashiers and Glenville students, the Glenville High School was the place for the area’s students to advance their education. The Glenville High School was located on the east side of Lake Glenville. It was accessed by todays aptly-named Schoolhouse Road. At the time it was built in 1925, it was situated on a hill above the little mountain burg called Glenville, and the road was known as the main access road, headed down into the original Glenville village. Considered modern for its time, it was a fine sturdy building of brick construction having 10 classrooms, a gym and a cafeteria. The school has now been torn down.
Many generations of local people graduated from the 1925 brick Glenville High School. Students in 1945 were going to the same high school as their parents, and students of the 1960s were going to the same high school of their parents and grandparents. As you might expect, this made for a close-knit institution for Cashiers and Glenville students, parents and grandparents. Mrs. Julia Frizzell Stewart, herself a very early teacher in the one-room Norton school, had 2 daughters and 7 grandchildren who were all graduates of the Glenville High School.
The first graduating class of 1929 had 9 students graduating. The largest graduating class was in 1942 with forty-two students graduating.
The 1959 class of thirty-six graduates includes many people who would now be in their 70s and still remember the school. Some of them are Connie Lee Bumgarner, Shirley Mae Evitt, Melvin Jennings, Wanda Lee McCall and Shirley Raye Pressley. Of the 1960 class, there were Minnie Jamison, Marvin Jennings, Melba McCall and Herman Neely. The 1961 class of twenty included Scotty Dillard, Delia Hunter, Ellen Moss and Bobby McCall. In the 1962 class of twenty, Kay Bryson, Louise Bryson, Tommy Passmore and Clifford Russell graduated. The 1963 class saw a growth of a dozen more students, including Kenyon Ray Bryson, Patricia Corbin, Anna Lee Jamison, Edwin Madden, John Paul Norton, John Lee Tucker and Robin Watson.
Through the years of the Great Depression, the upheaval of the forced move of its town during the construction of the dam on Lake Glenville in the early 1940s, and the years following during World War II, the Glenville High School welcomed its students for fifty years until 1975 when its last classes were held.
